No, that's not a typo. Or a ridiculous fusion of a table and pants. TANT is an acronym for There's Actually a Name for That?
Merriam-Webster, the gold standard of what's accepted American English and what isn't, identifies 14 standard punctuation marks, standard meaning they are appropriate to use in formal writing. There are the delineators (periods, question marks, exclamation points, commas, semicolons, dashes), bonders (hyphens, semicolons, colons), enclosers (parentheses, braces, brackets, quotation marks, commas, dashes), omitters (ellipsis marks, apostrophes, hyphens), and possessors (apostrophes).
But just fourteen? No way. There are WAY more than just those.
English has dozens of "non-standard" punctuation marks that are used all the time in formal writing. They pepper every modern keyboard and are the backbone of a lot of online-only grammar. What makes them "non-standard" is that they 1. aren't used as frequently as the 14 standard marks, and 2. mostly came about after most grammatical conventions were established in the late Middle Ages.
Let's run down all the commonly used non-standard punctuation marks that are actually pretty standard. Most people can identify these marks by sight but have no idea what the mark is called or the rules governing it (hence, TANTs). We'll only look at commonly accepted punctuation marks and not bespoke marks that never widely caught on, like the percontation mark (⸮), diple obelismene (⸫), or manicule (☞).
Merriam-Webster, the gold standard of what's accepted American English and what isn't, identifies 14 standard punctuation marks, standard meaning they are appropriate to use in formal writing. There are the delineators (periods, question marks, exclamation points, commas, semicolons, dashes), bonders (hyphens, semicolons, colons), enclosers (parentheses, braces, brackets, quotation marks, commas, dashes), omitters (ellipsis marks, apostrophes, hyphens), and possessors (apostrophes).
But just fourteen? No way. There are WAY more than just those.
English has dozens of "non-standard" punctuation marks that are used all the time in formal writing. They pepper every modern keyboard and are the backbone of a lot of online-only grammar. What makes them "non-standard" is that they 1. aren't used as frequently as the 14 standard marks, and 2. mostly came about after most grammatical conventions were established in the late Middle Ages.
Let's run down all the commonly used non-standard punctuation marks that are actually pretty standard. Most people can identify these marks by sight but have no idea what the mark is called or the rules governing it (hence, TANTs). We'll only look at commonly accepted punctuation marks and not bespoke marks that never widely caught on, like the percontation mark (⸮), diple obelismene (⸫), or manicule (☞).
SOLIDUS (/)
Backslash
AMPERSAND (&)
INTERROBANG (‽)
ASTERISK (*) and OBELUS (†)
Double obelus and superscript
OCTOTHROPE (#) and NUMERO (№)
DEGREE (°) and PRIMES (' '' ''')
CHEVRONS (< >) and GUILLEMETS (« »)
TILDE (~) and other diacritical symbols
accent diaeresis
DINKUS ( * * * ) and other dingbats
PILCROW (¶) and other editorial symbols
Interpunct
Silcrow
Silcrow
PESO-DOLLAR ($) and other currancy symbols
Cent
Euro
Pound
Yen
Generic
Euro
Pound
Yen
Generic
PERCENT (%) and other mathematical symbols
Plus Minus Multiply Divide Equals Inequality Carat Tilde Double Tilde Fractions
AT (@) and other commercial symbols
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This article was last updated on 19 February 2026.